"You put your hands on any of these little fillies and I'll personally change your vocal pitch!"

So mortals, are you sick of Christmas yet? Be honest. It's OK to hate it. It's too many sweets and worrying about money. It's feeling so stressed and overstimulated that you're numb to the ever-present singing of children. What's so great about the singing of children anyway? They have no idea what they're doing. And the small talk! It's the worst! The inescapable, mindless seasonal banter usually hangs on two questions:

Have you finished your shopping?

Have you put your tree up yet?

The implication of both questions is clear: If you haven't, you're clearly some kind of delinquent, a derelict, a ne'er-do-well who refuses to participate in the largest economic ritual of the year in a timely manner. That's obviously how the person who asks such questions would think if they were genuinely listening for an answer. Don't sweat it, they're not. They just want an opportunity to tell you they've already put up their tree and got their shopping done. They were finished on Labor Day and they've been telling everybody who will nod politely at them ever since.

It's enough to make you hang yourself with a rope of garland and colored lights. Don't be so drastic. I've got a movie for you that will, if not relieve the merry monotony, then at least contribute to it.

This week's Thursday Thriller is To All A Goodnight.

This 1980 David Hess film opens in a flashback to "two years ago" at Calvin Finishing School for Girls. It seems a bunch of co-eds were chasing another girl through the house that Christmas break. One of them was wearing a Santa wig and brandishing an axe. They chase their prey out onto the balcony and she takes a tumble to her death. Why she doesn't survive the fall is curious, considering she turned into a mannequin right before impact. Returning to present day (1980), we see school emptying out for Christmas break, leaving behind five girls, their house mother Mrs. Jensen (Kiva Lawrence), and their slow-witted religious nut handyman Ralph (Buck West).

Over dinner. with the chaperones out of the room, Leia (Judith Bridges) reveals the plan. Her boyfriend T.J. (William Lauer) is flying in with a bunch of his buddies for an all-night fuck party. The only one who thinks this is a bad idea is Nancy, played by Jennifer Runyon. You remember her. Bill Murray tested her for psychic powers toward the beginning of Ghostbusters.

Nancy's not wrong. You know how these things go - the fuck party gets off track because there's a maniac picking the kids off one by one with knives and axes and crossbows and the like. In this case, the maniac is disguised as Santa Claus.

It's not the best Santa slasher, but it's got weird music by Richard Tufo and some pretty good kills. Harry Reems is in it for some reason. To All A Goodnight streams on YouTube.

Remember, you've only got 11 shopping days left to buy Todd Merriman's Santa Claus meets Frankenstein for Amazon Kindle before Christmas. When those 11 days are gone, it will be after Christmas.

"Why, I'm just trying to spread a little Yuletide fear."

I started my celebration of killer Santas last week to help make this holiday a little more tolerable for all you beautiful grinches, scrooges and all-around misanthropes out there and my research has lead me to something even I find outrageous.

The movie I'm going to tell you about this week has the audacity to allege that I am the father of Santa Claus. That is absolutely ridiculous because I'm a big fan of getting that money shot. Everyone knows I always pull out, except for maybe with Rosemary or with Damien's real mom or with all those other women with whom I tried to sire the Antichrist. OK, you know what? You get me a sample of Santa Claus's DNA and we'll take the case to Maury. 

This week's Thursday Thriller is Santa's Slay.

This 2005 comedy by writer/director David Steinman would have you believe that jolly, old Saint Nick is my son. The film's standout exposition sequence, a Rankin-Bass- style claymation flashback, explains that Santa was a demon who loved to torture and kill elves, but an angel disguised as an old man challenged him to an impromptu curling match. The bet was if Santa lost he would have to spend the next thousand years giving presents to children on Christmas.

The bet expires and Santa gets back to his evil roots. He sets Fran Drescher's hair on fire, uses a tree topper as a shuriken and burns down a strip club -- it's total mayhem.

Former NFL defensive tackle and WCW wrestling champion Bill Goldberg plays Santa, Dave Thomas plays a corrupt pastor, and Lost's Emilie de Ravin is the leading lady. Other familiar faces include Robert Culp, Rebecca Gayheart, Chris Kattan and James Caan.

It's a silly movie chock full of corny jokes and wrestling fan service. You'll probably like it if you enjoyed Jack Frost.

Santa's Slay streams on YouTube with Russian subtitles. The sound quality isn't the greatest so unless you read Russian, crank it up.

And if you want to read a Christmas story, I really can't recommend enough Santa Claus Meets Frankenstein by Todd Merriman.

"A man described as a homicidal maniac has escaped from the hospital for the criminally insane."

I suppose it was inevitable. As its merchandise gradually surrounded and swallowed up your Halloween displays in the stores, you tried to ignore it. When families got up from their Thanksgiving meals and rushed out to camp in front of their favorite big box monstrosities of retail commerce, you stayed at the table and refused to shop, because you take one holiday at a time. But your candy bag is empty and the dishes have been put away. Christmas is here in all its loud, gaudy enthusiasm for glad tidings of joy, peace on earth and goodwill toward men, and shopping. Mostly shopping. 

Despair not, mortal. Just because J.C.'s birthday is coming up doesn't mean you have to live without violent, trashy cinema in your own home. Let the ignorant jackals converge on Wal-Mart and tear each other apart over flat-screen TVs. Bolt the door and hunker down on the couch with a cup of cheer to celebrate a holiday tradition I can get behind -- movies about Santa Claus murdering people.  

People always seem interested to know where their holiday traditions come from, so I'll tell you a little about this one. 

This week's Thursday Thriller is Tales from the Crypt. 

This 1972 Amicus anthology by director Freddie Francis is, to my memory, the first film to feature a killer Kringle. 

Five people get lost on their guided tour of a catacomb where a bunch of religious nuts are buried, and come face to face with Crypt Keeper. Fans of the HBO series won't find their favorite skeleton puppet in this early film adaption of EC Comics stories by William M. Gaines, Al Feldstein and Johnny Craig. Instead, the Crypt Keeper is actor Ralph Richardson in a hooded robe. He tells each of the lost souls how they will die.

 

If you're an impatient sort, don't worry. Psycho Psanta shows up in the first segment, "And All Through the House." Joan Collins plays Joanne Clayton, who has just murdered her husband for the insurance money. As she's cleaning up the mess and making sure her daughter stays in bed, a bulletin comes over the radio, interrupting the stodgy, English Christmas Carols, to warn listeners to be on the lookout for an escaped lunatic in a Santa suit. Sure enough, he's right their in her window. Joanne starts to phone the police, but remembers her husband's corpse is still lying their bleeding all over the carpet. She gets the mess arranged, then realizes her daughter is not in her room!

It's a pretty simple story. 

Of course there are four other stories that aren't bad either. In particular, Peter Cushing makes a pretty gnarly zombie. 

Tales from the Crypt streams on YouTube. 

If you're looking for other Christmas stories, maybe something to read on your Kindle, check out Santa Claus meets Frankenstein by Todd Merriman.

"Burn, witch! Burn, witch! Burn! Burn! Burn!"

Another Thanksgiving is upon us, mortals, and you've no doubt heard again, the story of the pilgrims who left England in pursuit of religious freedom in the New World. They loaded up the Mayflower with their faith and agricultural ignorance and sailed across the Atlantic, nearly starved, and got bailed out by the natives.

Of course, the buckle-hatted sociopaths' ideals of religious freedom didn't extend to people who worship me. Life in the puritan colonies could be especially hard on witches.

This week's Thursday Thrillers is City of the Dead.

This 1960 John Moxey film opens up with a good, old-fashioned, New England witch-burning, in which some angry pilgrims in Whitewood, Mass., set their torches to a lady named Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessel). Selwyn's last utterance is to call on Lucifer and put a curse on the town. Flash forward to a university classroom where Professor Alan Driscoll (Christopher Lee) tells the story to students in his History of Witchcraft class. One particularly enterprising student, Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) stays after to pick the prof's brain about how she can learn more. Driscoll suggests she go to Whitewood and stay at the Raven's Inn.

Nan's boyfriend Bill (Tom Naylor) and brother Dick (Dennis Lotis) are scientists who don't cotton to Driscoll's flaky passion for the humanities. They try to talk Nan out of the trip, to no avail. Nan drives alone to the especially foggy town of Whitewood and checks in to the Raven's Inn, where we discover the proprietor looks identical to Elizabeth Selwyn, and that Nan has pretty underwear.

Nan finds Whitewood to be most intellectually stimulating to research, as it is full of mysterious strangers, vanishing hitchhikers, and hotel rooms with trap doors in the floor. After a month goes by and she doesn't return home, Bill and skeptical Dick go looking for her with the help of a Whitewood resident named Patricia (Betta St. John). I don't want to give too much away, but the whole thing ends in black-robed figures on fire.

City of the Dead is safe enough for family viewing so you don't have to wait for your holiday guests to leave to turn it on or anything. It streams on YouTube.

"What have you in your bowels?"

I cannot help but wonder, mortals, what obstacles you're willing to overcome for entertainment. I understand that some of you are willing to miss out on a gruesome Japanese flick just because you're put off by subtitles, while others will accept the sound of crying babies in the background just to watch in the comfort of your own home the latest cinematic release that someone shot on their phone in a movie theater in Beijing. I understand how little things can detract from your viewing experience while you can overlook others.

I dug deep on YouTube this past week to find a movie for you mortals. I spent hours poring over renders of dubious quality and even more questionable legality. I watched Vincent Price in Cry of the Banshee with Greek subtitles. I tried to enjoy Christopher Lee in The Devil Rides Out with dialogue overdubbed in Russian. I'm not ruling these movies out for future review, but I'm going to hold out until more palatable presentations are available.

I see no reason to hesitate in suggesting the movie I want to talk about, though, because its present format, ripped from a VHS tape with Spanish subtitles, complete with anti-piracy notice up front, is the perfect context in which to enjoy this film.

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Brotherhood of Satan. 

Strother Martin stars in this 1971 Bernard McEveety film. It's about a couple, Ben (Charles Bateman) and Nicky (Ahna Capri), who are trying to take Ben's daughter K.T. (Geri Reischl) for a birthday visit to grandma's. Grandma apparently lives on the ass end of nowhere, and en route they happen upon a horrific crash and rush into the town of Hillsboro to report it to the sheriff (L.Q. Jones) who appears to have a piece of taxidermy attached to his head. The family is then attacked by a mob and have to burn rubber out of town to escape. Once clear of the pitchfork-wielding rubes, they swerve to miss a child standing in the middle of the highway and have to hike back to town for help.

They soon find a whole family smothered to death with plastic bags on their heads and have to talk to the sheriff again. As the plot unravels, we find that a cult of old people have been abducting Hillsboro's children to raise them as devil worshippers.

I'll be honest: this movie is all over the place. A car gets crushed by a tank in the first scene. An old lady gets ripped apart by her fellow cult members. Nicky has a balls-trippy nightmare. K.T. is the guest of honor at a Satanic birthday party. It's never very clear what exactly is going on, but it is a heaping helping of "what the fuck did I just watch?" which is my favorite genre of film lately. Plus, if you're paying close attention to the subtitles, you can brush up on your Spanish.

The Brotherhood of Satan streams on YouTube, as "la hermandad de satan."

"There's only one way to remove Byron's hallucinations."

Mortals, this week I am inspired by a renewed interest in mental health in America to tell you about a movie that takes place in a psychiatric hospital. 

This week's Thursday Thriller is Asylum.

This 1972 Amicus anthology was directed by Roy Ward Baker. It's about a young psychiatrist named Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) who arrives at the titular institution for about a job. Dr. Rutherford (Patrick Magee) informs him that the Dr. Starr he's come to talk to has himself gone bonkers and left Rutherford wheelchair bound. Starr has developed a new persona, but if Martin can go upstairs, talk to four patients, and figure out which one used to be Starr, Rutherford will give him the job. 

On his tour, Martin hears the stories of four patients: Bonnie (Barbara Parkins), who believes she was attacked by the dismembered corpse of her lover's wife; Bruno (Barry Morse), a tailor who says he made a magic suit for Peter Cushing so he could bring his son back to life; Barbara (Charlotte Rampling), a pill head who swears her imaginary friend Britt Ekland went on a murder spree and not her; and Byron (Herbert Lom), a former neurosurgeon who makes little robot dolls with lifelike human faces. 

The special effects may look a little silly today, but I think they just add to the film's charm.

Asylum comprises four quick stories you don't have to think too hard about to enjoy. It streams on Amazon Prime and YouTube. 

"Listen to them. The children of the night, what music they make."

Well mortals, another Halloween has come and gone, and you're now one All Saints Day closer to the grave. I don't know about you, but my ears are still ringing with the screams of Louisville's haunted house fans after unleashing hellish fury at The Devil's Attic for the past month and a half.

My head is pounding. I need something quiet to watch.

This week's Thursday Thrillers is Dracula.

Tod Browning directed this iconic 1931 film based on the novel by Bram Stoker, but if you try to base your book report on it, you will flunk. Bela Lugosi stars in the title role, but keep your eye on Dwight Frye as Renfield, a legal apprentice enslaved by Dracula to assist in moving the vampire from Transylvania to England, where he intends to establish new hunting grounds. Seems the Transylvania locals have caught wise about the mysterious goings-on at the Borgo Pass, and they tell everyone, even Renfield, to steer clear. Renfield doesn't listen, and he spends the rest of the movie alternating between lucidity and madness.

Dracula is a good movie for your Halloween hangover. It's quiet and familiar enough that if you doze off, which is my plan, it's no big deal. Dracula streams on Shudder.